


of maybes and uncertainties

by dreaminglows



Series: drabbles & ficlets [1]
Category: TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Best Friends, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, just a drabble (supposedly), lit major!taehyun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 11:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreaminglows/pseuds/dreaminglows
Summary: Literature major Taehyun writes about his most favorite person and least favorite word in the world.





	of maybes and uncertainties

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this as a ficlet on twt but it might be easier to read here :D

Taehyun loves words. That’s one easy way to put it.

He loves how words may not seem much when left to stand on their own, but when knitted together hold a far greater power than most people even realize. He loves how words as mundane and simple as _hope_ or _great_ or _day_ can make sentences like _“I hope you’re having a great day,”_ that’s already enough to make somebody’s whole day. Words have power over people; words have power over our emotions. Words like _“I love you,” _and _“I’m here,” _can heal, just as words like “_Go away,” _and _“Goodbye,”_ can break. Words can shatter, and at the same time, put you back in one piece again. Words can kill yet also make you feel just as alive.

_It’s a superpower_, Taehyun likes to think. Not liken to telekinesis, or the ability to control fire or the weather, but words can stir people’s hearts like the moon when it pulls the tides. Words can bring you up and then tear you down. Words can make your heart swell with joy, and then with hurt. Words _affect_, a cause that brings effect, and Taehyun has always loved being able to move people through his words.

That’s why he loves writing. That’s why he loves reading other people’s words just as much as he loves writing his. That’s why he made the last-minute decision to follow his heart and take up Literature rather than a pre-med course like what his parents would have wanted him to. That’s why he loves words, and thinking of words, and learning words, and just bringing words to life.

That’s why when he got this one assignment for his Creative Writing class, he suddenly doesn’t know what to write. Taehyun slumps in his seat out of frustration.

“You look like somebody just insulted _Pride and Prejudice_ right at your face by saying it’s of the same artistic value as _Twilight_,” he looks up to see a tall boy, with a long curly fringe and an amused smile he knows all too well, pull out the seat right across from him. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You haven’t been picking up my calls.”

Taehyun uses his pen to point at the sign right above his head. _No answering of calls while inside the library._

“Well, that’s a dumb rule. What if there’s an emergency? Like what if you forgot to turn off the stove when you left your apartment, so the place caught on fire and I was the only one to witness it?”

“I wouldn’t. I double check everything before I leave,” Taehyun answers simply as he closes his laptop.

“Okay, smarty pants, what if it’s a bestfriend emergency?”

“A _bestfriend emergency?_”

“Yeah, like what if one day I just go ‘Oh hey, I haven’t seen my bestfriend of ten years for a whole week now because of exams, and I miss him loads, but oh wait! He’s not picking up his calls! Oh no!’ Will you just let me die of longing and sorrow then?”

“Nobody dies of longing and sorrow, Hyuka.”

“Mother Teresa did.”

“Mother Teresa died of a _heart_ _attack_.”

“Well, what if I get a heart attack _because _I miss you loads since this is literally the first time I’ve seen you all week? Like Justin Bieber said, and I quote, _never say never_.”

“God, you’re impossible,” Taehyun rolls his eyes but a smile is on his face. “Kai Kamal Huening, what are you doing here? I thought you’re ‘allergic’ to education, and anything in relation to that, including this very library you’re breathing in now?”

“I told you, I came here looking for you,” Kai purses out his lips into a sad pout. “I haven’t seen you _all week_. I missed you, and I was gonna ask if you’d like to go get lunch with me.”

“I already ate,” Taehyun looks up to see Kai’s shoulders fall like a dejected puppy. Taehyun chuckles and flicks his forehead. “But I don’t mind accompanying you while you do. I need a drink.”

“Yey!” Kai jumps from his seat a bit too loudly, immediately getting a quick shush from the librarian. He instantly turns towards her direction and apologizes profusely, but his apologies are making more fuss and commotion than earlier that he gets another stern—and a whole lot angrier— look from the librarian. Taehyun just shakes his head, holding back a laugh, before linking his arm on Kai’s and dragging him out of the library.

It’s a familiar scenario. Kai getting in trouble be it a small or huge scale kind of trouble, Taehyun always being there to get him out of it, them walking away with their arms linked together, and Kai laughing with him like they’re the only two people in the world.

For the longest time, it had always been Kai and Taehyun, Hyuka and Hyunnie. Best friends for life, each other’s brother from another mother, soulmates. They were the one thing that had remained constant in each other’s lives, and it had always never been the same without the other.

Kai with the curly hair. Kai with the crooked nose and the toothy smile. Kai with the dolphin laugh, and the lanky torso, and the pretty deer eyes. Kai who’s good at the piano, but bad at division. Kai who crashed his bike when they were twelve and got them in detention for the first time when they were fourteen just because he couldn’t leave the limping stray cat alone he had to cut History class, and Taehyun couldn’t leave him alone either. Kai who was the first to offer to be his friend when he just moved into the neighborhood back when they were ten, and the first to make Taehyun feel that he wasn’t entirely alone.

Kai is Taehyun’s Hyuka, his bestfriend of ten years and counting, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“What got you so upset earlier?” Kai asks after taking a big mouthful of his burger. They settled with going to Kai’s favorite burger joint right outside of campus, with Taehyun ordering a strawberry smoothie as Kai munches down on a big plate of cheeseburger and fries.

“I wasn’t upset.”

“Yes, you were,” Kai says as he places both his index fingers by his eyebrows. “You had your upset face on. What happened?”

Taehyun steals a fry from Kai’s plate and pops it into his mouth. “It’s nothing much really. Just stressed with homework.”

“I can help! Well, as long as it’s not Algebra that is.”

“I would never ask for your help in Algebra.”

“Hey! I’m an Applied Music major, okay? I don’t need to be good at numbers,” Kai lets out defensively. “Anyway, the homework? What is it about and why are you upset about it?”

“It’s for my Creative Writing class,” Taehyun takes a sip from his smoothie.

“Isn’t that your favorite class though?”

“Well, yeah, but the homework has been bugging me for two days now since I don’t know what to write,” Taehyun shrugs. “It’s most likely just a writer’s block brought upon by the flood of exams last week. My brain’s _dead_ as hell.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that phrase from you,” Kai stares at him in astonishment. “Not knowing what to write. That’s a first. Now I’m even more curious what the topic is. Please do tell, Tae-kespeare.”

“Please don’t _ever_ call me that again,” Taehyun shudders. “And nah, you probably won’t be able to help much either anyway.”

“_Hey_, I take great offense to that. I write well too, you know. I write lyrics,” Kai squints at him. “Just say it! I’ll help as much as I can!”

“If you won’t be able to, you’re paying for my smoothie.”

“Easy peasy, and if I _do_ end up being of help, you’re the one buying pizza for Friday movie night.”

“Huh? Hey, that’s unfair. Why is my small smoothie equivalent to two 11-inch pizza boxes?”

“_Because_,” Kai clasps his hands together. “You’ll be the only one benefitting anyway if I’ll be able to help. The pizza is for me winning the bet _and_ helping you with your homework. It’s already payment for two different things.”

“That makes absolutely no sense, but fine,” Taehyun sighs. “If I were a word, what word would I be?”

Kai stares at him in confusion for a few seconds. “Huh?”

Taehyun stares at him pointedly, “See? I told you, you wouldn’t be able to help much either—”

“You’re a sunflower,” Kai cuts him off, the blush in his ears clearly visible from where Taehyun sat. “Yeah, that’s you in a word. Sunflower.”

Taehyun fights back a smile as he sits up straight and leans forward, chin resting on the palm of his propped arm, “A _sunflower_? You know, I was actually thinking more along the lines of abstract terms like ‘home’ or ‘happiness’ or ‘serenity’—”

“It’s the first word I thought of, okay!” The blush in his ears makes its way to his face. “If you don’t want it, I’ll just think of something else quick.”

Taehyun laughs, “I was just kidding. Sunflower is okay but do explain why.”

“I am _not_ about to go mushy right at your face, no way,” Kai picks up three fries and stuffs it into his mouth all at once.

“_Oooh, _is the meaning very sentimental then?” Taehyun’s tone is teasing. “I’m honored you see me that way, Kamal.”

“You’re _really_ enjoying this, aren’t you?” Kai pouts at him in frustration. “I’m starting to think this isn’t really your assignment and you’re just trying to embarrass me.”

Taehyun just shrugs, “I’m still waiting for the meaning behind the sunflower. Why is that me?”

Kai plays with his fingers, avoiding eye contact. “_Because_ I like sunflowers.”

“Are you saying you like me?”

Kai’s head immediately shoots up, face even redder. “Not like _that_. You’re my bestfriend, so of course I like you.”

Taehyun shrugs again. _Hm, right. Of course._

“Anyway, before you _rudely _cut me off, I was gonna say I like sunflowers because they make me happy. I don’t know if it’s the shape, or the color yellow, or just the thought of the sunflower, but looking at sunflowers makes me happy. It’s a kind of happiness I can’t seem to put into words, but it’s a nice feeling,” Kai is finally looking at him in the eye, grinning.

“So... I make you happy?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“No, you didn’t say it directly, so I don’t wanna _assume_...”

“God, you really are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“It’s inflating my ego in a way, so yeah,” Taehyun laughs.

Kai rolls his eyes. “Yes, you, Kang Taehyun, my bestfriend of ten years, my brother from another mother, my soulmate, make me really, _really_ happy.”

“How happy?”

“Very,” Kai makes a circle with his arms. “_Very _happy.”

“I’m glad,” Taehyun flashes him a wide smile. “But you do realize I can’t write that on my paper since it’s from _your_ point of view.”

“_Huh_,” Kai’s eyes widen. “But I answered your question?”

“Yeah, but your answer, as sweet as that was, really isn’t that useful for me since I can’t write it down on my paper,” Taehyun pushes the empty glass of smoothie towards him. “Thanks for the smoothie, bestfriend.”

Kai slumps on his seat. “I feel cheated on.”

“I already told you beforehand, didn’t I?”

“Okay, fine, a deal is a deal anyway,” Kai tries to sit up. “But tell me what you think of me as too.”

Taehyun stares at him for a moment, taken aback. “What?”

“Tell me what word you see me as. I’m curious too,” Kai’s flashing him a toothy grin, eyes perked and twinkling in curiosity like they usually do when he’s very interested in something.

“But you don’t have a Creative Writing homework about that that’s due in a week.”

“Forget Creative Writing! I’m asking as your bestfriend. What’s the first word that comes up in your head when you think of me?” It’s Kai now who’s leaning forward. “Cute? Talented? Handsome? Oh, it’s definitely handsome, right?”

“In your dreams,” Taehyun scoffs. “And I don’t wanna tell you.”

Kai whines, “Why not?”

“Because it’s already past four in the afternoon, and I promised my mom I’ll be home before five so I can help with making dinner,” Taehyun answers, getting up from his seat as he adjusts the sling of his backpack hanging on his shoulder. “A few cousins are coming over.”

“You don’t have to say the meaning behind it!” Kai continues to push. “Just say what word.”

“You would still nag me about the meaning tomorrow, or over text later.”

“I promise I won’t!”

“You suck at keeping promises, though.”

“_Hyunnie!”_

“Maybe,” Taehyun says at the same time as Kai frustratedly yells the nickname he got from him when they were eleven.

Kai pauses as he blinks at him in confusion, before saying, “Did you just call me baby?”

Taehyun rolls his eyes and starts walking away, “If that’s what you think I said, then _okay_. I’m not explaining anything.”

“Wait! I’m walking back with you!” Kai quickly scrambles to pick up his bag and catch up to Taehyun who’s already at the front door of the diner. “But did I really hear that right, though? Did you say _baby_? I’m baby?”

Taehyun waits for the green light to turn to red and then to the walk sign before he answers. “Maybe.”

“Hyunnie,” Kai almost cries out as they cross the road. “Is it not baby? Does it rhyme with baby?”

“Maybe.”

“It does?”

“Maybe.”

“Just answer yes or no, please.”

“_Maybe_.”

“Are you really just gonna answer ‘maybe’ to everything I say now?” Kai purses out his lips in frustration, and he always looks like a puppy to Taehyun whenever he does that. “Yes or no, Kang Taehyun.”

Taehyun turns to him, and shrugs with a smile. “Maybe.”

Kai groans, “I’m starting to hate that word now.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t like it that much either,” Taehyun lets out a small smile before walking down the intersection that separates their way and waving Kai goodbye.

Taehyun reaches home around ten minutes later and walks straight into his room. No mother cooking in the kitchen at sight, since his mom is working overtime today. No cousins he’s expecting to come over tonight since they never do visit unless it’s a holiday. Tonight, it’s just him and his Creative Writing essay, and the feelings he had been bottling up for years now.

He takes out his notebook from his bag and opens the page with the folded tip where he neatly wrote down the question he had to write answers for.

_Words have power over people and our emotions. Words can bring you up and then tear you down. Words can make your heart swell with joy, and then with hurt. Words can affect us, both good and bad._

_Think of a person in your life that has that power over your emotions just as words do. What word would you associate that person with, and why that word out of all the millions of words in the world?_

It’s not that Taehyun has writer’s block. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the question, nor is it that he doesn’t know what to write. He does know. The moment the assignment had been given to him, a name and a face had immediately popped out in his head. He knows what to write, but it’s the thought of actually writing these words that’s stopping him.

Because writing these words down means that he’s finally acknowledging what he has been trying to avoid for so long now, yet the back of his head is telling him what he has always been doing when he has feelings to get rid of—write all those feelings down on paper.

_So what’s really stopping you? Acknowledging these feelings or getting rid of them?_

Taehyun clicks on his tongues, as Kai’s voice echoes in his head.

_“You’re my bestfriend, so of course I like you.”_

He opens his laptop, clicks on a new Word document and starts typing down.

-

_I’ve always loved words ever since I was a kid. My parents were always too busy with work to have time for me, so I spent most of my childhood in my grandfather’s library with my nose buried in all sorts of books—lengthy novels, academic journals, encyclopedias, anything I could find inside that one room that contained a long sequence of words in them. As a kid, I found comfort in the words of other people, and as I grew older, I wanted to find comfort in my own words too. That’s why I started writing, and as I began to write more and more, I encountered more words along the way too._

_Every word I’ve come across gave me a certain emotion. Some words make me feel euphoric, and some words make me feel a certain type sadness I can’t quite explain. There are words I’ve grown to love, and words I’ve grown to hate, but there are no other words that I grew as much of a disliking to as the word ‘maybe’._

_Maybe. I really do detest the word ‘maybe’. There’s an uncertainty that hangs in that word. It’s neither a yes nor a no; it’s just in between, hanging on a thread full of questions and doubts, and slipping on that thread feels like you’re about fall down a dark void where you’re unsure of when you’re ever gonna stop falling or if there’s even anything to cushion your fall at all._

_Over time, I’ve come to realize that what I fear the most is the unknown, of the things I don’t know and the things I’m uncertain of, and the word ‘maybe’ just encapsulates fully that fear. A ‘maybe’ is an unknown variable. You got an answer, but it isn’t really an answer and just gives you more questions to ponder on. You give out a yes or no question, and they gave you ‘maybe’ as an answer. Why ‘maybe’? Does it lean more on ‘yes’, or does it fall back on ‘no’ more? Where does the uncertainty come from? Why are their doubts? Why are they indecisive? It just fills you with more and more questions that’ll eventually overflow before you can even find an answer to a single one._

_I hate the word ‘maybe’, but ironically, it’s the first word that comes into mind whenever I think of the one person that pulls my heartstrings more than any word could ever. If this person was a word to me, he’d be a ‘maybe’. He’s an uncertainty, an unknown variable. I guess the universe is funny like that._

_He wasn’t always a maybe. There was a time when he was something certain. He was a friend— a bestfriend— in a time when I was certain that’s all he will ever be to me, but then one day, I just woke up losing all of that certainty I tried my best to never lose hold of. It was scary. The feeling of losing that one constant in your life to the unknown, it was absolutely scary._

_I’ve always known falling in love leads to uncertainties. I’ve fallen in love before—two, three times— and I let myself fall for the uncertainty of either getting my heart broken or keeping it safe but falling in love with your bestfriend was a bigger unknown to me._

_Falling in love meant thinking of what-ifs. It meant thinking about unknown possibilities like the other party liking you back, or never feeling the same way. It meant sending your heart out to a war with no specific survival rate. Falling in love with your bestfriend, however, meant either keeping your heart safe or getting it shattered by losing two important parts of your life in one person—the one you would give your heart to, and the one whose shoulder you cry on when your heart shatters to the ground, and that’s what I have been too scared to risk. I can bear losing my heart, but I can’t bear losing my bestfriend._

_Yet that fear doesn’t keep my mind from thinking of what-ifs and maybes. When he greets me good morning, I think about the possibility that he’s just as excited to say it to me just as I am excited to hear it from him. When he bids me good night, I think of the possibility that he loves the way I’m the last person he talks to before he goes to sleep. I think of the countless possibilities that this might turn out fine, that maybe he sees me the same way as I him, and that he’s afraid of risking whatever we have just as much as I do. That maybe he loves the way I laugh just as I love seeing him smile. That when he holds my hand, he thinks of never letting me go just as much as I don’t want him to. But maybe is a word that holds two things in a scale, and I think of the negative possibilities just as much as the positive ones._

_What if all I ever will be to him is just his bestfriend? What if I’m just that one person he’d open his heart but never give it to? What if things will never be the same again if I tell him how I feel, and he doesn’t like me back, no matter how much we try to stitch the holes this would eventually create? _

_I could just put an end to all these questions if I ask him head on, but I have no plans of gaining enough courage to do so. He’s the one uncertainty I will never be brave enough to find answers on, the one maybe that I’ll just wait slip my mind so I would no longer have to think about. I fear lingering in the unknown, but I fear losing the one person that rules my heart like the moon with the tide, and one’s words with another’s emotions, more._

_If my bestfriend was a word, he’d be a ‘maybe’, and I might hate the word, but he’s the only ‘maybe’ I wouldn’t mind keeping._

_Kang Taehyun, AB Literature_

-

He clicks ‘Save’ and doesn’t bother proofreading the whole thing as he immediately sends it to his professor’s email. When he gave the class that assignment the other day, Taehyun knows for sure his professor wasn’t expecting a whole ass essay of a college boy pining over his bestfriend of ten years, yet he no longer has the energy to edit all of that out even though he knows most of them were out of loop to what he was looking for.

All Taehyun is feeling now is contentment—contentment that the unknown storm in his chest is now brought into life in the form of words, and now that it has physically manifested right before him for him to see, it’ll be easier for him to fight and forget about it. It’s easier to forget feelings if you’ve already acknowledged their existence, and everything he wrote tonight was that acknowledgment.

All he has to do now is forget.

Taehyun doesn’t realize he had been crying the entire time, until he lies on his bed a few minutes later with his head aching and his face all sore.

He’s in love with Kai, his Hyuka.

He has liked him from when he first outstretched his hand to him and told him his name, and he has loved him from the moment he had told him he would never let him feel alone ever again. Words may heal or break, shatter or put you back into place, but Kai has more power over him than any word could, and it is as scary as it is amusing, because Kai holds both what he fears and what he loves all in his entire existence.

And just as Taehyun was about to drift off to sleep with all these what-ifs and maybes in his head, his phone makes a soft ping beside him.

** _From: Hyuka; 9:35pm_ **

_What if I don’t want to be just a maybe?_

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twt: @antibeomjun


End file.
